Another silence came here. The embers in the fire dropped softly, and the dull March twilight gathered more and more thickly. I felt as if I were being led into some sacred room, closed many years, but where the dead had once lain. Perhaps it was fanciful, but it seemed almost as if I were seeing the place where poor Miss Charlotte"s youth had died.
"It wasn"t proper that I should marry him, Ruth. I know now father was right, only sometimes--For myself I suppose I hadn"t proper pride, and I shouldn"t have minded; but father was right. A Kendall couldn"t marry a Sprague, of course. I knew it all along; and I vowed to myself over and over that I wouldn"t care for him. When a girl tells herself that she won"t love a man, Ruth," she broke in with a bitter laugh, "the thing"s done already. It was so with me. I needn"t have promised not to love him if I hadn"t given him my whole heart already,--what a girl calls her heart. I wouldn"t own it; and over and over I told him that I didn"t care for him; and then at last"--
It was terrible to hear the voice in which she spoke. She seemed to be choking, and it was all that I could do to keep control of myself. I could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say. I wanted to take her in my arms and get her pitiful, tear-stained face hidden; but I only sat quiet.
"Well, we were engaged at last, and I knew father would never consent; but I hoped something would happen. When we are young enough we all hope the wildest things will happen and we shall get what we want. Then father found out; and then--and then--I don"t blame father, Ruth. He was right. I see now that he was right. Of course it wouldn"t have done; but then it almost killed me. If it hadn"t been for your mother, dear, I think I should have died. I wanted to die; but I had to take care of father."
I put out my hand and got hold of hers, but I could not speak. The tears dropped down so that they sparkled in the firelight, but she did not wipe them away. I was crying myself, for her old sorrow and mine seemed all part of the one great pain of the race, somehow. I felt as if to be a woman meant something so sad that I dared not think of it.
"And the hardest was that he thought I was wrong to give him up. He could not see it as I did, Ruth; and of course it was natural that he couldn"t understand how father would feel about the family. I could never explain it to him, and I couldn"t have borne to hurt his feelings by telling him."
"Is he"--
"He is dead, my dear. He married over at Fremont, and I hope he was happy. I think probably he was. Men are happy sometimes when a woman wouldn"t be. I hope he was happy."
That was the whole of it. We sat there silent until Rosa came to call us to supper. When we stood up I put my arms about her, and kissed her.
Then she made a joke, and wiped her eyes, and through supper she was so gay that I could hardly keep back the tears. Poor, poor, lonely, brave Miss Charlotte!
March 21. Cousin Mehitable arrived yesterday according to her usual fashion, preceded by a telegram. I tell her that if she followed her real inclinations, she would dispatch her telegram from the station, and then race the messenger; but she is constrained by her breeding to be a little more deliberate, so I have the few hours of her journey in which to expect her. It is all part of her brisk way. She can never move fast enough, talk quickly enough, get through whatever she is doing with rapidity enough. I remember Father"s telling her once that she would never have patience to lie and wait for the Day of Judgment, but would get up every century or two to hurry things along. It always seems as if she would wear herself to shreds in a week; yet here she is, more lively at sixty than I am at less than half that age.
She was very kind, and softened wonderfully when she spoke of Mother. I think that she loved her more than she does any creature now alive.
"Aunt Martha," she said last night, "wasn"t human. She was far too angelic for that. But she was too sweet and human for an angel. For my part I think she was something far better than either, and far more sensible."
This was a speech so characteristic that it brought me to tears and smiles together.
To-night Cousin Mehitable came to the point of her errand with customary directness.
"I came down," she said, "to see how soon you expect to arrange to live with me."
"I hadn"t expected anything about it," I returned.
"Of course you would keep the house," she went on, entirely disregarding my feeble protest. "You might want to come back summers sometimes. This summer I"m going to take you to Europe."
I am too much accustomed to her habit of planning things to be taken entirely by surprise; but it did rather take my breath away to find my future so completely disposed of. I felt almost as if I were not even to have a chance to protest.
"But I never thought of giving up the house," I managed to say.
"Of course not; why should you?" she returned briskly. "You have money enough to keep up the place and live where you please. Don"t I know that for this ten years you and Aunt Martha haven"t spent half your income?
Keep it, of course; for, as I say, sometimes you may like to come back for old times" sake."
I could only stare at her, and laugh.
"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than ever, "but you ought to understand that I"ve taken charge of you. We are all that are left of the family now, and I"m the head of it. You are a foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You need somebody to look after you. If I"d had you in charge, you"d never have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I"m glad you had the sense to break it."
I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not answer.
"Don"t blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It"s all over, and you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."
"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.
"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him a wide reputation. Don"t outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the country like a clodhopper."
"You forget that Mother"s health"--I began; but with Cousin Mehitable one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.
"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life there with very little trouble. That"s what I had in mind ten years ago, when I insisted on your coming out."
"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."
"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were a fool."
Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.
She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned to the attack.
"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall"--
"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.
"But you will. What else should you do?"
"I might go on living here."
"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don"t call this living, do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or went to the theatre, or had any society?"
I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn"t any society.
"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know yourself they are not society. You haven"t forgotten the year I brought you out."
I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot go away for long. There would be n.o.body to start the reading-room, or keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think my friends love me.
March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she has a bonnet from Paris,--"a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn"t resist, Ruth!"--and this bonnet must form part of the church service on Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.
"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred subjects."
"Your bonnet isn"t sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can"t be till it"s been to church on Easter."
"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."
"I wasn"t speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical, frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."
"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting the church in her excitement, "but it isn"t really. It"s as modest and appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and _chic_!"
"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but you know you"re a worldly old thing. You"d insist upon having your angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."
Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.